Town in a Blueberrry Jam (13 page)

FOURTEEN

Doc was waiting for her in the truck. He gave her his best bored look, which he had perfected over the years, as she threw the chicken wire into the back and climbed into the cab.

“Took you long enough,” he said evenly as he started the truck. “You said fifteen minutes.”

“I got held up talking to Mr. Gumm.”

“Ah, well, that’ll happen. Get everything you needed?”

“Yup.”

She wanted to tell him more—about eavesdropping on the conversation between Cameron and Officer Martin, and about Cameron’s strange reaction upon hearing of Sapphire Vine’s death—but she held back. She wasn’t ready to talk about it just yet. Instead, she fell silently into her own thoughts as Doc backed up the truck, started off along Main Street, made a right turn onto the Coastal Loop, and headed out of town. But as they came to the intersection of River Road, Candy impulsively signaled to the right.

“Dad, do me a favor and turn here,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“Make a right turn up here.”

He looked puzzled. “I thought you needed to get home so you can deliver those pies to Melody’s Place.”

“It’s called Melody’s Café, and I need to stop at the Tremonts’ first.”

“The Tremonts’? Why would you wanna go there? Ed’s away and Maggie’s probably still at work.”

Candy rubbed her forehead in thought. “I’m not sure. I just want to check on something. Indulge me. Please?”

He arched an eyebrow. “Well, I guess I’ve done that enough times,” he said as his mouth worked itself into a grin, and made a right turn at the intersection.

The Tremonts lived on the north side of the English River, in an area locally known as Fowler’s Corner. A hundred years ago, all this land had belonged to one of the town’s most illustrious former citizens, a long-whiskered gentleman known as Edwin P. Fowler who had come to Cape Willington in the 1860s when he was still in his twenties, and in the decades that followed had made his fortune in logging, banking, and land speculation.

But most of Fowler’s land had long since been sold off, and starting in the 1950s a number of side streets and cul-de-sacs had been built in the area. The majority of homes were little white capes with a few split-levels mingled in here and there. The Tremonts lived on a street of newer homes at the edge of town, in a three-bedroom green gabled house barely five years old.

Doc pulled into the driveway and Candy jumped out. “I’ll be right back.”

“Take your time,” he said, turning off the engine but leaving the radio on. He leaned his head back. “Guess I’m not in a hurry.”

Candy rang the doorbell and waited. After what seemed like an interminable period of time, the door cracked open and a curious eye peeked out. “Who’s there?”

“Amanda? It’s me, Candy.”

“Oh, hi.” The door opened a bit further. Amanda stood in the doorway, wearing white shorts and a pale pink sleeveless blouse, and eating a muffin. Candy noticed with a bit of dismay that the muffin wasn’t one of hers. “Mom’s at work.”

“I’m not here to see your mom. I’m here to see you.”

“Oh. Okay.” Amanda opened the door a little further. “You wanna come in?”

“Actually”—Candy looked past her into the house—“I was wondering . . . is Cameron here?”

“Cam?” Amanda turned and looked behind her as if she wasn’t really sure. “Um, I don’t think so. Why?”

“I need to talk to him.”

Amanda’s forehead crinkled. “About what?” she asked as she took another bite of the muffin.

“Oh, nothing really important. Listen, if he comes in, would you . . . ?”

At that moment she was interrupted by the sound of a door opening somewhere in the back of the house and a male voice calling out, “Amanda? You here?”

“Oh, there he is now,” Amanda said, chewing loudly. “So you wanna come in?”

Candy nodded. “If it’s okay.”

“Sure.”

They found Cameron in the kitchen, his nose stuck deep into the fridge. “Hey, ’Manda,” he called as he heard them approaching, “where’s the rest of that watermelon your mom—”

He stopped abruptly as he backed out of the fridge and saw Candy. “Oh. It’s you,” he said in a surprisingly cold tone. He slammed shut the refrigerator door and walked away toward the family room that adjoined the kitchen.

“Cameron, wait. I want to talk to you.” Candy followed him, with Amanda trailing behind.

“What about?” he growled, stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans.

“I overheard you talking to Officer Martin at Gumm’s.”

“Oh, that. Yeah, I guess you were there, weren’t you? I forgot about that.” He plopped down on a relatively new brown sofa and searched around for the TV remote.

Candy stood in front of him with her arms crossed. She got right to the point. “You took the news about Sapphire pretty hard.”

“Yeah, well, it just surprised me, that’s all.”

“I wasn’t aware you knew Sapphire that well. Were you two friends?”

Cameron looked up at her crossly and then flicked his eyes to Amanda before he continued his search for the remote. “No.”

“Then why the big scene at Gumm’s?”

He gave her a dirty look. “What is this, the third degree?”

“Not at all. I was just worried about you. You seemed pretty upset. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine. Just hungry, that’s all.” He finally found the remote, stuck down between the seat cushions. He fished it out, leaned back, and flicked on the TV.

“Cameron.” Candy sat down beside him as he channel surfed. He wouldn’t look at her. “Cameron, I want to talk to you about the hammers.”

“What?”

“The hammers. The new red-handled hammers you got in at the store.”

He breathed out through gritted teeth. “What about them?”

Candy took a deep breath and hesitated only a moment before plunging on. “You said you sold one of the hammers to someone from Town Hall. I was just wondering what he looked like. The person you sold it to, I mean.”

Cameron glanced over at her with suspicion in his eyes. “Why?”

Candy paused again. It was a good question. What should she say? She didn’t really know the answer herself, except that some sort of instinct seemed to be driving her on. “Something just doesn’t quite make sense, that’s all,” she answered finally. “I guess I’m trying to figure a few things out.”

He considered that as he stopped channel surfing at a sports news program on ESPN. Finally he shrugged. “It was just some guy. I’ve seen him in the store a bunch of times, but he never talks to me much. He mostly deals with Mr. Gumm.”

“What does this guy look like?” Candy prodded.

Cameron’s brow wrinkled in thought. “Kinda overweight, I guess, with this big beer belly. Glasses, black hair, black moustache.” After a moment, Cameron added, “And he has kinda this red face.”

Candy thought a moment. “Ned? Is that who it was? Ned Winetrop?”

Cameron shrugged. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“And he bought the hammer from you on Saturday morning?”

Cameron nodded.

There was silence for a few moments. Candy could feel the tension coming off him. Finally she smiled and slapped her hands on her knees. “Well, okay. I guess that’s about all I wanted to ask you.” She looked at him closely. “You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.” He got up and walked back into the kitchen, with Candy and Amanda following. He crossed to the fridge and opened it again. “I’m starving,” he said, bending over so he could scrutinize the items inside.

Amanda edged past him and reached for the peanut butter and jelly. “I’ll make you a sandwich.”

He smiled up at her, and for the first time since he had walked in the door he looked like the teenage boy Candy knew so well. “Thanks, babe,” he said to Amanda. “You’re too good to me.”

“Aww, you’re worth it,” she said, snuggling up against him.

Candy watched them wistfully for a moment, then smiled. “Well, I guess I’ll be on my way. Like I said, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

They seemed to barely hear her. In fact, she felt practically invisible.

She turned toward the door. “I’ll just . . . let myself out. No, no, that’s okay. No reason to see me to the door or anything silly like that. I’m a big girl. I’ll be just fine.”

They never noticed her leaving.

Back out in the truck, Doc was listening to a country song and tapping away noisily on the steering wheel. He started up the truck as Candy climbed in beside him.

“So, we good to go?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“I saw Cameron’s car pull up a few minutes ago.”

“Yup,” Candy said.

“Something’s going on, huh?” Doc glanced over at his daughter. “You up to no good?”

Candy gave him a sly smile. “Yup.”

He laughed and patted her on the knee as he turned the truck back toward home. “That’s my girl.”

FIFTEEN

It was nearly three thirty by the time Candy dropped off the pies at Melody’s Café. They had agreed to a price of nine dollars apiece, which was adequate for Candy and would still turn a nice profit for Melody, who planned to sell slices at three dollars apiece.

“That should hold me for this week,” Melody told her. “They look lovely.”

“Thanks. I’ll have more for you on Monday.”

Melody paid her in cash, which she pulled from the register, and with forty-five dollars in her pocket, Candy walked back out to the Jeep as a fierce gust of wind, full of the scent of earth and sea, swept down from the sky and assaulted her, whipping her hair about her face.

Though the morning had been fairly warm and pleasant, the day had steadily worsened as ominous clouds gathered on the western horizon. Those clouds had reached them now, the dark churning sky swallowing up the sun. Candy climbed into the driver’s seat as the first few heavy raindrops pelted the sidewalk and street around her.

She sat for a moment as the sky broke open and the deluge began. Lightning crackled in the distance, and a roll of thunder shook like a fist of fury down from the skies.

Candy wasn’t thinking about the storm, though. She was thinking about Sapphire Vine and Ray and that red-handled hammer. Something Maggie had said to her on the phone that morning kept nagging at her, tickling away at her brain:
Ray wouldn’t hurt a fly
, Maggie had said.
He tears up when he steps on a cockroach.

Maybe so. But they had found his hammer at the scene of the crime. And according to Finn Woodbury, someone had seen Ray’s truck in front of Sapphire’s house last night, when Sapphire had been murdered. What had he been doing there? And could he really have hit her with his hammer?

Candy recalled the way Ray had cradled the hammer when she had handed it back to him that day in the barn. Suddenly she knew what had been bothering her all day.

Ray loves that hammer
, she thought.
The other day, he treated it like some sort of precious thing, almost as though he were in love with it. He didn’t even want me to touch it. He didn’t want it to get damaged at all. So if he loves that hammer so much, why would he muck it all up by hitting Sapphire in the skull with it? And why would he leave it there after he hit her?

None of it made any sense.

Candy started up the Jeep. She decided she had to talk to Maggie again, to try to sort it all out. She drove to the intersection of River Road and the Loop, made a left turn, then another left onto Main Street and a right onto Ocean Avenue. It could be difficult to find a parking space along here in the afternoons, but she lucked out and found a spot practically right in front of Stone & Milbury’s. Ignoring the pelting rain, she jumped out of the Jeep and dashed toward the insurance agency’s front door.

It was only a dozen steps or so, but she was soaking wet by the time she made it inside. “Whoa, is it raining hard out there!” she exclaimed as she walked through the reception area and turned the corner into Maggie’s office.

She stopped dead. Three curious faces looked up at her.

Maggie sat behind her desk, with two stacks of papers in front of her. A middle-aged couple sat in front of the desk, facing Maggie.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Candy said in surprise. “I didn’t realize you had customers.”

With the height of professionalism, Maggie rose and gave the couple a pleasant smile. “Excuse me for a moment,” she said to them. “A friend of mine. I’ll be right back.”

Taking Candy by the arm, Maggie steered her out of the office.

“I’m so sorry,” Candy said in embarrassment as they walked back into the reception area.

“Don’t worry about it.” Maggie dismissed the interruption with a wave of her hand. “We’re just finishing up some things. Where’ve you been? You look like a drowned rat.”

“It’s raining.”

Maggie scowled. “You know, they have these neat little things called umbrellas. Fabulous invention. They do a great job of keeping you dry when it rains. You might want to check one out sometime.”

“Ha, ha, very funny. Listen, I have to talk to you about something.”

“Can’t right now, honey. I’m in the middle of a meeting.” She leaned a little toward her office and called to her clients in the friendliest possible tone, “I’ll be right there!”

“When are you free?” Candy asked.

“I’m here ’til five thirty.”

“Meet for drinks after work?”

Maggie considered that for a moment. “Don’t know if I can, but I’ll try. Call me around five, okay?”

“Got it. Good luck with your customers.”

“And you get yourself an umbrella, girl. Better yet, take this one.” Maggie reached toward a twenty-year-old metal coatrack that stood near the door. A battered old black umbrella was leaning against one of the posts. “Someone left it and never came back for it, so it’s yours.”

“Thanks, you’re a doll.”

“That’s what all my boyfriends tell me,” Maggie said with a grin as she sashayed back into her office.

Outside, the wind was whipping so hard that it threatened to rip the umbrella right out of Candy’s hand. Before she knew what was happening, she was blown sideways down the street. She ducked into an alcove and stood there for a moment in the shelter of an overhang, fiddling with the umbrella, which had flipped outward, and trying to gather up the courage to make a run for her Jeep. Then a door pushed opened behind her and a tall, thirty-something man emerged from the building, nearly running her over in his haste.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” the man said, looking up.

“No, it was my fault. I just had to take refuge from the rain for a few minutes.”

The man stopped beside her and squinted up into the sky. “It is coming down heavy, isn’t it?” He looked over at her. “I love summer storms like this, don’t you?”

“Well, yes,” said Candy a bit bashfully, “but it doesn’t do much for one’s appearance.” She pushed some of the wet locks off her forehead.

He laughed pleasantly. “You look just fine to me.” He studied her a little closer. “You’re Candy Holliday, aren’t you? You live with Doc out at Blueberry Acres?”

“That’s right. Have we met before?”

He held out his hand. “Name’s Ben Clayton.”

“Oh! We
have
met, I think,” Candy said, shaking hands with him, “though for the life of me I can’t remember where. You work for the
Cape Crier
, right?” The
Cape Crier
was the local weekly newspaper—
The Voice of Downeast Maine
, as its tagline claimed. It went out to readers in parts of two counties—Hancock and Washington.

“Actually, I’m the editor,” Ben said.

“Oh, that’s right. I’ve seen your name in the paper. What a fun job.” But as the words left her mouth, the smile fell from her face as she realized what that meant. “Oh! You must have worked with Sapphire.”

His expression, too, took on a measure of seriousness. “I was her boss.”

“I didn’t realize,” Candy said. “I’m so sorry.”

Ben nodded. He was taller than she was, just shy of six feet, she guessed, and lean, with a rugged face and light brown hair that he had let grow a bit long in the back. He wore jeans and an open-collar blue shirt, and carried a scuffed, dark brown leather satchel. Candy wondered why she hadn’t noticed him much around town before.

“Sapphire’s death was a shock to us all,” he said heavily. “It’s tragic how something like that can happen so quickly, and someone you knew and liked and worked with is just . . . gone, just like that.”

“It’s terrible, just terrible,” Candy agreed, eyes downcast.

They both were silent for a moment. Then Ben asked, “Were you a friend of hers?”

“An acquaintance,” Candy hedged. “We knew each other, but we didn’t hang around socially or anything like that.”

“Hmm,” Ben said, watching her.

What does that mean?
Candy wondered.

“You know, this may sound strange,” he continued after a moment, “but it seems to me that Sapphire didn’t have many friends. Oh, she knew a lot of people—I was always astounded by how many people she knew—but she didn’t seem to be close to many of them.”

Candy wasn’t sure how to reply to that. “Well,” she responded tactfully, “maybe it’s because she was such a . . . unique personality.”

“You can say that again.”

They stood awkwardly in silence for a moment. Finally Candy looked out at the sky. “Well, I guess I should make a run for it. . . .”

She straightened out the umbrella and turned up her collar, preparing to brave the rain, but then Ben touched her by the elbow. “Candy, before you go, can I ask you something?”

Candy looked at him curiously.
Oh my God
, she thought as a small smile flickered across her face,
is he gonna ask me on a date
? Swallowing, she said, “Sure.”

“This may sound odd,” he began, then hesitated. He seemed to reconsider what he was about to do. “Maybe . . . maybe I should wait until another time.”

Candy forced her smile just a bit as she turned to face him. “No, go ahead. I’d like to hear your question.”

“Well, all right, then. I have to confess that I’ve done some checking up on you.”

That took Candy by surprise. “You have?”

He laughed and looked a bit embarrassed. “I hope that didn’t come out the way it sounded. You see, Sapphire keeps these files on people in town, including you.” As the smile fell from Candy’s face, he added quickly, “For her column, you know. She does extensive research. I’ve never seen anyone work as hard as she does—um,
did
—in, um, ensuring the accuracy of her columns. She collected everything—clippings, biographical histories, business cards and announcements, magazine articles, press releases, anything she could get her hands on. And all that information went into her files, for research.”

“And she has a file on me?” Candy asked incredulously.

Ben nodded. “The police left just about an hour ago. They wanted to go through Sapphire’s office and files. Just routine, they said. They didn’t find much, but they sure made a mess of the place. Anyway, as I was straightening up, I came across your file stuck in the back of one of the drawers, so I flipped through it. I guess curiosity got the better of me. Anyway, I noticed that you’ve done some writing in your career.”

“Oh. That.” Candy made a face. “That was years ago. I worked for a marketing firm in Boston for ten years, and I wrote a few magazine articles on the side—personality profiles, mostly, interesting business people around town, that sort of thing.”

“Published in some of the local newspapers,” Ben prompted.

“They were small papers. I’m not sure anyone even read them. And they paid practically nothing.”

“But you
have
written and been published?”

“Well, yes, but—” Candy paused and tilted her head, unable to keep a confused look off her face.

“I guess I should get to the point,” Ben said, sounding professional again. “As you know, Sapphire’s weekly gossip column was one of the mainstays of the newspaper. In fact, I probably would not be exaggerating if I said it was one of the best-read features in the paper. That and the school lunch menu. And the police blotter, of course.” He sighed and went on. “I’d probably also be accurate if I said that we sold a lot of papers strictly
because
of Sapphire’s column. And now that she’s gone . . .”

“Yes?”

“Well, I’m in a bind, and I was wondering if, well, if you’d like to take over the writing of her column.”

Candy eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m completely serious,” Ben continued quickly. “Here’s the thing. I have to get someone on that column right away, or else I’m going to have a big hole in next week’s paper. I’d do it myself, but I’ve got my hands full with Sapphire’s murder investigation and Jock’s death and the festival and everything else that’s been going on around town. Wow, what a week.” He made a face and shook his head. “Plus, I’m a bit thin on staff because of summer vacations. And a lot of my volunteers have been bailing on me. I just need someone to write up some info about the pageant and contestants, plus some local gossip stuff. You know, the sort of thing Sapphire used to do. Jane Doe got married, Bobby Jones scraped his knee, Eddie and Edith’s kid joined the Navy, that sort of thing. Community news.”